Matching system and display method using real-time event processing

Abstract

The subject matter herein provides for online dating gameplay that offers instant and ongoing new opportunities for content, interaction, communication, and risk, and that rewards communication initiation and persistence, all without increasing the skill level required to find a relationship while providing an incentive to play or engage with the online dating community continuously. The approach employs gamification (and, in particular, a slot machine-style display) to encourage users (sometimes referred to herein as “daters” or “players”) to frequently log in and engage with other daters.

What we claim is as follows: 
     
       1. A method operative in a computing infrastructure in which one or more data producers generate events that are consumed by one or more data consumers, wherein users interact with the computing infrastructure via user computing devices having display interfaces, comprising:
 deploying a set of distributed queues, wherein a particular queue receives events associated with an event type from one or more data producers and selectively provides the events to one or more data consumers that subscribe to the event type; and 
 as users interact with the computing infrastructure, real-time processing events associated with each event type using the set of distributed queues, wherein the event types include: (i) a first event type associated with a matching algorithm that, responsive to an event of the first type generated by a first data producer, generates a pool of candidate matches for a particular user having a user profile, (ii) a second event type that, responsive to an event of the second type generated by a second data producer, delivers a finite set of images associated with the pool of candidate matches to a particular user computing device to facilitate rendering at the user computing device, as a set of spinning display animations over a number of available spin cycles for a session, of subsets of user profile images selected from the pool, wherein, for each spinning display animation, a subset of user profile images having a number of images that is less than the number of images in the finite set are rendered, and wherein a first subset of the images differs from a second subset of the images across first and second spin cycles, and wherein the number of available spin cycles for the session is decremented after each spin cycle; and (iii) a third event type that, responsive to an event of the third type generated by a third data producer, associates a selected user profile image to the user profile, the selection having occurred at the user computing device after a particular spinning display animation of the set of animations reached a given steady state. 
 
     
     
       2. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the event types include (iv) a fourth event type that, responsive to an event of the fourth type generated by a fourth producer, locks the selected user profile. 
     
     
       3. The method as described in  claim 2  wherein the event types include (v) a fifth event type that, responsive to an event of the fifth type generated by a fifth producer, generates a match opportunity. 
     
     
       4. The method as described in  claim 3  further including providing the match opportunity to one of: the particular user, the user associated with the selected user profile, and to both the particular user and the user associated with the selected user profile. 
     
     
       5. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the matching algorithm generates the pool of candidate matches at least in part based on one or more preferences or attributes associated with the particular user, and preferences or attributes associated with one or more other participating users. 
     
     
       6. The method as described in  claim 5  wherein the matching algorithm implements a term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) search function from information derived in the user profile. 
     
     
       7. The method as described in  claim 5  wherein the matching algorithm also uses information about past matching activity to generate the pool of candidate matches. 
     
     
       8. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the given steady state is a cessation of the spinning display. 
     
     
       9. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the images are associated with a pool of candidate matches that are associated with the particular user with respect to a defined geographic proximity. 
     
     
       10. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the third event type is one of: a like function, and a lock-in function. 
     
     
       11. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the real-time processing of events includes storing events associated with an event type in the particular queue via mapped memory. 
     
     
       12. The method as described in  claim 1  wherein the real-time processing of events includes utilizing append-only file operations to read/write to and from the particular queue. 
     
     
       13. A computer program product in a non-transitory computer readable medium, the computer program product executing as an application on a user computing device having a processor, the computing device having a display interface, the application comprising computer program instructions configured:
 to transmit to a back-end service a request to create a session; 
 in response to a successful login at the back-end service, to receive and cache a finite set of user profile images for the session, the user profile images having been identified at the back-end service from a corpus of user profiles that have been determined, using a real-time event processing engine executing in the back-end service, as possible match candidates with respect to a user profile of the user; 
 in response to a request, and provided that a number of available spin cycles for the session is non-zero, to selectively render a spinning display animation that upon reaching a stable state displays a subset of the set of user profile images, the subset having a number of images that is less than a number of images in the finite set, and wherein a first subset of the images differs from a second subset of the images across first and second spin cycles, and wherein the number of available spin cycles for the session is decremented after each spin cycle; 
 in response to receipt of a selection of one of the displayed user profile images, the displayed user profile image being associated with a second user, to lock the selected user profile; and 
 in response to a determination that data associated with the selected user profile indicates that the user's user profile has been previously locked by the second user, to render a match opportunity to the user and, optionally, the second user. 
 
     
     
       14. The computer program product as described  claim 13  wherein the match candidates are identified at least in part based on one or more preferences or attributes associated with the user, and preferences or attributes associated with one or more other participating users that include the second user. 
     
     
       15. The computer program product as described in  claim 14  wherein the match candidates are also identified based on information about past matching activity associated with the user. 
     
     
       16. The computer program product as described in  claim 13  wherein the user profile images are associated with participating users that are in a defined geographic proximity to the user. 
     
     
       17. The computer program product as described in  claim 13  wherein the computer program instructions are configured to cause display of the subset of the set of user profile images in the stable state as two columns of three (3) user profile images per column. 
     
     
       18. The computer program product as described in  claim 13  wherein a user profile image for a given user has metadata about the given user associated therewith.